New Windsor firm gets contract to install tanks at Carroll airport

A New Windsor contractor will install two 12,000-gallon fuel tanks at the Carroll County Regional Airport, doubling the facility's storage capacity and allowing for increased sales of jet fuel.

The county commissioners awarded a $128,900 contract yesterday, the lowest of four bids, to Subsurface Technology. The contract requires the installation and connection to existing pumps and outfitting each tank with sensors and a leak-detection system.

"It is nice that they are local," Commissioner Julia Walsh Gouge said of the contractor.

The tanks should be in operation by summer, but "we need them now," said Gary Horst, who supervises the airport as administrator of the county's Office of Performance Auditing and Special Projects.

The 155-acre airport property, which opened in 1979 on Route 97 outside Westminster, handles about 100,000 flights a year and is considered a reliever airport for Baltimore-Washington International and other larger airports in the area.

Fuel sales in fiscal year 2004, which ended June 30, exceeded the total for the previous fiscal year by more than 100,000 gallons, an increase of more than 80 percent. Sales are expected to top 550,000 gallons this year, Horst said. Fuel sales and revenues from fully leased corporate hangars should put the airport in the black for the first time in many years, he said.

The new tanks will provide additional storage and relieve concerns about shortages. Airport administrators have to wait until the two 12,000-gallon tanks are nearly empty before filling them again from tankers.